


Liberta in Astri

by Evilkitten3



Series: Jelano Weekend [1]
Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-12 18:37:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5676400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evilkitten3/pseuds/Evilkitten3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He offers her his hand, and, for a moment, things don't seem so bad. Or, five times she wasn't okay and the one time she was. (For Jelano weekend, on Tumblr).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Liberta in Astri

**Author's Note:**

> AN: I wrote this for the first day of Jelano weekend, "Heaven", of which there is only about forty minutes left, so let's hope I can get this done in time. I should probably warn you that it is likely to be very short.

Their first meeting isn't overly dramatic – there's no whips or cracking thunder or dragons carrying off princess. She trips over the chains binding her feet, and he reaches out to her. No one else does, for fear of the guards' whips, but she's seen him stand up to the guards before – seen him take a whip to the face unflinchingly – and she doesn't think anything scares him, really.

"Are you okay?" he asks, helping her up. She nods, cheeks red underneath the dirt and mud caking her face, but she makes no attempt to respond, so he returns to work after giving her a gentle smile.

Their second meeting is scarier, because there's a guard yelling at her for being unable to fulfill her quota of rocks due to an injured ankle, and he gets in the way and takes the beating for her. This time, she does thank him, and the smile he gives her is much wider than before.

The third time is terrifying. There's a rebellion, people are running around, and she's doing her best to avoid getting run over. People are crowding onto the boats, some of them are laughing, and then he's there, looking terrified, screaming for them to get back on land. Not everybody makes it before the ships explode. This time, when he asks if she's okay and she says yes, his smile seems much less real than before.

The fourth time is the last for eight years. He's taken over everything, and now there's someone taking her and four others away. Whatever look he gives her when he says goodbye isn't a smile. She wonders if it ever was.

The fifth time, eight years later, might be the worst. She could handle him looking confidant, looking dark, looking cruel, but she can't handle the broken shell of a person, lost and confused and smiling at that red-haired Fairy girl, that he's become. She avoids him with everything she's got. He doesn't even know she's there.

The sixth time is the last, but not in a bad way. This time, he fights – really fights, not struggles to escape a hellhole, not psychotically tries to sacrifice an old friend, not pathetically throws himself in-between Titania and whatever might be harming her – but really _fights_ , and he shines so brilliantly on the battlefield that she wonders how her teammates and the observers of the fight can still see.

She's the second of the five to decide to follow him, and, this time, when he asks her if she's okay, she just laughs.

"I'm free," she says simply. And, really, what more needs to be said?


End file.
